GregAlso

Dumb.
Dumb.
Dumb.

*note to self... use the term "Halos" in every post when referring to the team*

TEMPE, Ariz. — Mickey Callaway’s strategy for fixing the Angels’ pitching staff is a simple one, the most basic idea that every coach tells his pitchers from Little League to the major leagues.
“We have to throw strikes,” the Angels’ new pitching coach said. “That’s going to be our mission. We’re going to try to throw more strikes than anybody else in the league. If we can do that, we’re going to be where we need to be.”
The Angels were dead last in the majors in 2019, throwing just 62.3 percent of their pitches for strikes. No surprise, then, that they were 25th with a 5.12 ERA.
Callaway, however, has been here before.
After a nondescript pitching career that included a stop with the Angels and would eventually lead Callaway to pitch in Asia, he started a coaching career in the Cleveland Indians organization. He spent three years in the minors before being promoted to big league pitching coach, inheriting a team in 2012 had ranked 27th in the majors in strike percentage.
The Indians had also posted team ERA’s over 4.00 for the previous six years in a row.
In 2013, the first season under Callaway, the Indians jumped to 18th in strike percentage, and then fifth, third, seventh and second. Their cumulative ERA over those five seasons was 3.76, the best in the American League.
Indians manager Terry Francona, who hired Callaway when he took over the club, was instantly impressed.
“He’s an extremely confident person,” Francona said this week. “That’s what amazed me. His first year as a major league pitching coach and you look at him in the first week of the season and it was like he’d been there for 10 years. And I mean that as a compliment. Not that he’s arrogant. He’s just good.”
Callaway’s prized pupil, of course, was Corey Kluber. In 2012, Kluber had posted a 5.14 ERA in 63 innings. The next season, under Callaway, he cut that to 3.85 in 147-1/3 innings. The year after that, he won the first of his two Cy Young Awards. Kluber improved his strike rate in each of his first three seasons under Callaway.
“He may simplify it, but there’s a method to what he’s doing,” Francona said. “If not, everybody could do it. He tries to identify what you’re able to throw for strikes, and go from there.”
It’s not as simple as telling pitchers to throw strikes, but it’s also not that complicated, Callaway said. Much of it is, in fact, an aggressive mentality, and constant reminders.
“It’s something we have to preach every day,” Callaway said. “Are we going to worry about their spin rate and the shape of their pitches? Absolutely. We can help that. But the last thing I want them worried about is ‘I gotta shape this pitch this way when I’m on the mound.’ No, you have to throw a strike, with that ball that’s in your hand.”
A few Angels pitchers have said that Callaway so far has done a good job of keeping things simple.
“In this world of pitching where everybody is worried about movement and velocity and shape and all kinds of stuff, sometimes you do miss out on simple things,” Andrew Heaney said. “That’s not to say you can throw the ball down the middle and hope it goes well, but there is a mentality where even if you try to throw the ball down the middle and miss, you’re going to miss on the corners. If you start being too fine with stuff and start nibbling, that’s when you get in trouble.”
Dylan Bundy, who has already had four pitching coaches in the big leagues, said so far he gets a “vibe” from Callaway that he won’t be bogging them down with analytics. He preaches sticking to what pitchers do best.
“If you throw to your strengths, you’ll be consistently good,” Bundy said.
Callaway recalled one year with the Indians when he went into a playoff advance scouting meeting and essentially ditched the scouting reports.
“I walked in the room and I said, ‘I want you to deal with adversity better than anyone on the other staff,’” Callaway said. “That was our advance meeting. I didn’t go over the hitters. That’s how I view the mental side of the game. You watch Corey Kluber, Max Scherzer, the best guys. They don’t let anything bother them. You can’t tell if they’re pitching good or bad. And that goes a long way. You can control the opponent’s confidence by doing that sort of thing. We’re going to talk a lot about that.”
All of which is not to say that Callaway doesn’t have a foothold in analytics. No pitching coach could get a job in this era without it. He said his normal strategy is to work with the front office’s analytics team to determine what information can help the pitcher the most, and only take that small fraction of the data to him.
“When we go to the player, it’s one small nudge in the right direction that’s going to be impactful,” Callaway said.
Callaway, 44, talks excitedly in his folksy Tennessee drawl about all things pitching. His passion for the job is evident after he spent two years away from it, as the manager of the New York Mets. Callaway joked that he has “PTSD” when thinking back to the tumultuous couple seasons in the fishbowl of New York. Aside from the team not playing up to expectations, he had a public confrontation with a reporter, one that was explained away later as a misunderstanding.
It wasn’t long after the Mets fired Callaway in October that he heard from Joe Maddon, who had just been hired to manage the Angels. Maddon was the bench coach when Callaway pitched for the Angels.
“Joe called me and I was like ‘Heck yes,’” Callaway said. “Absolutely. I am just elated to be back here.”
Although Callaway is admittedly more comfortable back in the pitching coach role than he was as a manager, he said he took lessons from the manager’s chair that he can now apply to make him a better pitching coach.
“There’s a lot of things that a manager has to think about that a pitching coach doesn’t think about, so what it’s going to do is allow me to help Joe out a little more,” Callaway said. “I probably wasn’t helping (Francona) in a lot of areas that didn’t really occur to me at the time.”
For example, Callaway said as a pitching coach he didn’t appreciate the value of controlling the running game as much as he did as a manager.
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Angels’ JC Ramírez said his velocity returned to 96 mph in winter ball Angels’ Justin Upton looks for bounceback season Angels’ Albert Pujols moving well early in camp after a rehab-free winter Angels’ Brian Goodwin says he has no hard feelings after arbitration hearing Angels photo day at spring training: See the new and returning faces Maddon, who had managed against Callaway in the National League, also sees that he’s grown from the experience.
“A mind once stretched has a difficult time going back to its original form,” Maddon said.
Maddon and Callaway have both spoken about their pitchers being aggressive in the strike zone, and hopefully getting an out within the first three pitches. That will help toward another priority, which is getting starters deeper into games.
Callaway will be attempting that without the marquee names he had in Cleveland or New York, but with inconsistent veterans like Heaney and Bundy, and inexperienced young pitchers like Griffin Canning, Patrick Sandoval and José Suarez.
“When I got (to Cleveland) it was very similar,” Callaway said. “Very good stuff. Pretty good strikeout numbers. The walks were too high. They weren’t willing to throw the ball over the plate. We talked constantly about throwing strikes. We just beat it into them, every single day.”
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Astros suck, but it would be hard to ever dislike Greinke. Hilarious. 

These lawsuits by Astros Season Ticket Holders are intriguing as they could conceivably get to discovery. That would mean evidence subpoenaed by the court and players forced to testify under oath. I guess this is one thing I can root for in Houston! 
 
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/texas-sports-nation/astros/amp/Astros-lawsuits-face-complicated-path-toward-trial-15069061.php

Do you not see the danger in that? What if a team tried, looses badly, then gets punished because they failed. You set a loop that spirals downward and can go out of control. You have to incentivize winning not make loosing worse. Some team is going to loose, its inevitable. The goal is to make winning more valuable than throwing away wins.  

These lawsuits by Astros Season Ticket Holders are intriguing as they could conceivably get to discovery. That would mean evidence subpoenaed by the court and players forced to testify under oath. I guess this is one thing I can root for in Houston! 
 
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/texas-sports-nation/astros/amp/Astros-lawsuits-face-complicated-path-toward-trial-15069061.php

These lawsuits by Astros Season Ticket Holders are intriguing as they could conceivably get to discovery. That would mean evidence subpoenaed by the court and players forced to testify under oath. I guess this is one thing I can root for in Houston! 
 
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/texas-sports-nation/astros/amp/Astros-lawsuits-face-complicated-path-toward-trial-15069061.php

These lawsuits by Astros Season Ticket Holders are intriguing as they could conceivably get to discovery. That would mean evidence subpoenaed by the court and players forced to testify under oath. I guess this is one thing I can root for in Houston! 
 
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/texas-sports-nation/astros/amp/Astros-lawsuits-face-complicated-path-toward-trial-15069061.php

After Arte controlled the offseason and nixed one of his trades by pulling rank. “Win, but do it only with the players I allow you to have.” This feels hollow to me. 

I shared this in the thread about punishments but the short answer is @Stradlingright but here’s the quote from an article in the register to prove that. 
 
“Our early efforts were not particularly successful in terms of making progress with the investigation,” Manfred said. “My office then contacted the MLBPA to request player cooperation. We wanted players to submit to interviews. The MLBPA asked if we had a disciplinary intention. I think the response was, that we could not rule that out. The union indicated to us that that would be a problem.” 
The union told MLB, Manfred said, that the players would only cooperate if they received “blanket immunity.” MLB agreed, for lack of a better alternative.

I shared this in the thread about punishments but the short answer is @Stradlingright but here’s the quote from an article in the register to prove that. 
 
“Our early efforts were not particularly successful in terms of making progress with the investigation,” Manfred said. “My office then contacted the MLBPA to request player cooperation. We wanted players to submit to interviews. The MLBPA asked if we had a disciplinary intention. I think the response was, that we could not rule that out. The union indicated to us that that would be a problem.” 
The union told MLB, Manfred said, that the players would only cooperate if they received “blanket immunity.” MLB agreed, for lack of a better alternative.

If they miss the playoffs this year that would be one of the greatest moments in baseball history.

I shared this in the thread about punishments but the short answer is @Stradlingright but here’s the quote from an article in the register to prove that. 
 
“Our early efforts were not particularly successful in terms of making progress with the investigation,” Manfred said. “My office then contacted the MLBPA to request player cooperation. We wanted players to submit to interviews. The MLBPA asked if we had a disciplinary intention. I think the response was, that we could not rule that out. The union indicated to us that that would be a problem.” 
The union told MLB, Manfred said, that the players would only cooperate if they received “blanket immunity.” MLB agreed, for lack of a better alternative.

The most important part of this quote from the Players Association is the part that reads, “We acted to protect the rights of our members, as is our obligation under the law”.  In other words the Players Association was not going to allow the players to incriminate themselves.  

Actually from everything I have heard on the radio this isn’t true.  Manfred went to the union and they told the players to only share what they did if they are offered immunity.  Manfred tried to do the investigation without immunity and it got him nowhere.  So yea, the players are all pissed off but the union would not have backed Manfred.  

After Arte controlled the offseason and nixed one of his trades by pulling rank. “Win, but do it only with the players I allow you to have.” This feels hollow to me. 

so be it.  but at least MLB would have taken some sort of stance even if in vain.  And will all the player support against those that cheated, it would have been very interesting to see MLB put the onerous on the mlbpa to make a decision as to how to move forward.  My guess is that even if they supported the players, there would have been some internal conflict and it would have taken the impetus off the player to take matters into their own hands.  The political play by mlb was short-sighted and I've been saying all along that the players needed to be punished for this very reason.  I get that it would have been complicated, but how is it now?  

For the love of the game, everyone should stop talking about it. The players, fans and the press should be concentrating on 2020. Baseball needs to get back to being family entertainment. STFU and Play Ball!

After Arte controlled the offseason and nixed one of his trades by pulling rank. “Win, but do it only with the players I allow you to have.” This feels hollow to me. 

Someone on Reddit suggested intentionally walking every batter during ST so they all get 0 at bats. That was a special kind of evil and I love it.

After Arte controlled the offseason and nixed one of his trades by pulling rank. “Win, but do it only with the players I allow you to have.” This feels hollow to me.